Octopus intelligence may be related to never-before-seen mutation | Hacker News Reader

Octopus intelligence may be related to never-before-seen mutation

smithsonianmag.com

198 pointsbookofjoe188 comments

I found the article very interesting. Not click bait at all.

I didn't realize that an octopuses brain was spread out all over its body.

You might find the recent Theories of Everything podcast interview [0] with Peter Godfrey-Smith interesting. Godfrey-Smith is the author of "Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness," which is a great read to delve further.

Two other interesting aspects of cephalopods:

  * Make many more changes to RNA than other invertebrates [2]
  * Have only one type of light sensing cell in eyes, so may detect color by chromatic aberration

0. https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/p/peter-godfrey-smith-thi...

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Minds:_The_Octopus,_the_...

2. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/octopus-squid-rna-editin...

3. https://news.berkeley.edu/2016/07/05/weird-pupils-let-octopu...

Not only that, they have the highest ratio of brain-to-body-mass of any invertebrate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_intelligence

Yes, so maybe think twice before eating one.

eating any meat is morally questionable. (I say this as a person who does eat a lot of meat).

octopus passing a intelligence test does not keep it above the fold, neither does cattle go below the fold because they don't clear the bar (surprise, cattle are equally emotional, smart, curious etc.).

sounds wrong when I type it out but that is just the truth. milk is actually more ethically wrong when you think about it (isolating a calf from its mom to steal its food.)

doing one or the other does not absolve us. because one is more commonly accepted than the other

Is the isolation necessary or just an implementation detail? When my family had a goat we didn't do anything like that, the kids grew freely sucking the mother and then she was giving milk for years after that.

From my understanding this is doable in a context like yours but if you want to run a business out of it you have to optimize it which requires this separation.

The business of "optimizing" is breaking a lot of things in the world, when you think about it.

It's also providing a lot of value.

Yes, there's even a new-ish word this... enshitification.

modern cow, goat etc. are selectively bred to produce more milk than their youngling needs. so separation is not a strict requirement ( you might lose 5 - 10% more if you just let them be.)

But when we used to own cows & goats, it was very common practice to keep the youngling tied away a few hours before milking. you can feel the pain of separation the parent goes through. ( goat and cow crying, while looking at their offspring is indeed quite sad https://www.flickr.com/photos/murfalizer/4429214117). to add insult to injury it is also common practice to tie the youngling in the line sight of the parent to milk more freely.

Yes I don't get it why milk is considered more ethically sound than eggs in my country. Milk is stolen baby food extracted industrially under not so nice conditions.

Precision-Fermented (animal-Free) milk does exist but it is not easily available.

Unfertilized eggs are products that come out anyway and cannot become a chick till it is successfully fertilized outside of the hen. Granted that these two are extracted industrially under not so nice conditions.

Waiting for good lab grown meat to become cheap.

Just to note, eggs are not as ethical as you may assume... We have bred chickens so that they lay an unhealthy amount of eggs, which is likely a pretty stressful life experience. The original breed of bird (Red junglefowl) laid roughly a dozen eggs a year, where as modern layer hens will lay 300+. So it's not really "comes out anyway".

They often get medical conditions like Keel bone fractures and reproductive tract disease and they're also culled at around 18 months when output drops (tiny fraction of their lifespan). Oh and the male chicks don't lay, so roughly one per hen gets killed on day one.

I still think overall milk is probably worse, but plant-based is biggest win to reduce suffering overall!

I agree. Their 'living quarters' can be pretty bad too. I was describing their situation as compared to milk.

Your italicised text is /exactly/ wrong. Hen eggs are fertilised inside the hen’s oviduct. I mean, eggs are somewhat porous after laying, but they’re not that porous.

(I don’t know about you. I’m just a programmer holding strong opinions about avian physiology. Maybe there’s an actual biologist on the plane who can correct me)

Oh! Thanks for correcting me. Now I learned that the egg is fertilized (if at all) before the shell is formed. The hen would lay the egg anyway fertilization or no fertilization.

Simplified egg laying are the chicken analogue to human female menstruation. It is technically quite different (chickens don’t have a uterus, for one), but it is still analogous.

> Waiting for good lab grown meat to become cheap.

This is a cop out. There are plenty of excellent plant-based meat alternatives that I'm sure you couldn't tell the difference in a blind test.

For sure I wouldn't be able to tell the difference, but I don't know anything screaming more "processed food" than the meat alternatives. The component list is longer than this thread, sorry I wouldn't touch that with a hundred feet pole (hyperbole mine).

This just proves you don't have a lot of knowledge about food.

First of all, there are many studies that show that plant-based meat alternatives are healthier than their meat counterparts. Just because a food is processed doesn't mean it's unhealthy. Or are you under the impresssion your sausage and burger patty are health foods?

Second, just like with non-vegan foods, there is a variety of plant-based meat alternatives: Some companies include much healthier ingredients than others.

Finally, even if it weren't for my two first points, the main goal of replacing animal meat with plant-based meat is not health, but ethics and environmental concerns (but again, it's not unhealthier).

Tried some local brand today.

Am quiet satisfied with the kebabs. It's easier to fool in a kebab. Thanks to you I have updated my outdated prior. Things have certainly improved.

Thanks for the comment, means a lot and speaks for you to be open minded and try out new things and update your assumptions <3.

Certainly, the offering of plant-based meat and cheese alternatives have improved significantly in the past 5 years, and they keep improving.

> First of all, there are many studies that show that plant-based meat alternatives are healthier than their meat counterparts

Define healthier, and link the studies.

I eat vegetarian more often than not these days (although I don't usually use plant-based meat), and I'm not disagreeing with you. But cite your sources rather than making vague health claims.

> Define healthier, and link the studies.

Well, why are people who are afraid of a long ingredient lists (without understanding what the ingredients actually are) and just blurt out that vegan meats are unhealthier not asked the same?

In any case, the sister comment linked to some studies. Have a look.

Also, a simple web search will show you that many animal-based meats (such as red meat) are linked to many cancers, this is not even disputed.

Fair point, there's a lot of nutritional bunk going about. I'm not an expert either, but the Wikipedia article seems to cover the big studies that I've heard of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_alternative#Health

Could you point a few out ? I would be eager to try them out if they are available here in India.

I'm only familar with the brands in Germany unfortunately. You might have Beyond Burger available in India — not my favorite vegan burger patty, but I think it's good enough.

Thanks, will check.

Oh they are in fact available in India. Will definitely try them out.

The beyond burger is decent, but there's no way it's fooling someone in a blind taste test.

Is 100% taste match more important than not supporting an industry that kills Billions of animals a year and on top of that causing a huge amount of greenhouse gases and biosphere destruction?

What if it's 85% taste match, wouldn't that be enough to make the jump to plant based alternatives?

Male chicks for example get thrown in a wood chipper.

Inert gassing prior to the chipper shouldn't have been that expensive. That's the way capitalism works unfortunately.

And luckily we can vote with our wallet.

Hmm not sure. Depends on how well it is prepared. But yes, I said, there are much better brands. But the question was specifically about what's availabe in India, which I have no cllue about.

I think, in a cthullian universe, its actually very acceptable- as long as you accept the burden of upholding the habitat of the hunted. The predator is responsible for the continued existence and the thriving of the prey. So, one should sink concrete pylons with sawblades to destroy the dragnet fishing fleet.

Purity spirals are madness and a brittle luxury, edangering nature and the world, the moment the surplus financing that luxury snaps.

Stop doing it then. Often we see the logical conclusion to something, but then our brains just shrug it off and chooses ignorance. I think it is necessary at this point to find emotionally stimulating content such as videos of slaughterhouses not following regulation, this can help us come to terms with what we already know.

I agree with you.

but I find meat and the associated horrors that come with it, to be no more or less repugnant than the broader society and industrial complex that I'm forced to be a part of.

I suppose, I personally could contribute to be one less living being suffering. but in the broader scheme of things (new wars, poverty, deaths etc.). in a very nihilistic way, I don't see how it changes anything.

I'm probably just copping out.

Both are clearly ethically wrong.

We have alternatives. And many are even more healthful. Theres no reason to personally engage with either.

> surprise, cattle are equally emotional, smart, curious etc.

Measured how?

It would indeed be a surprise if cows were equally emotional, smart, and curious as any other species. Equality on three different dimensions should essentially never happen.

cows might be more in some dimensions like emotion because cattle raise their young unlike octopus which doesn't . does that make the equation any easier to accept?

why is this a controversial idea? mammals indeed are smarter than mollusks (of which octopus is one).

> why is this a controversial idea? mammals indeed are smarter than mollusks (of which octopus is one).

Well, what you said before was that cows were equally smart. Do you think "equally smart" and "smarter" mean the same thing?

i should've used, at least as smart as. i apologize

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28926931/

> Compared with meat-eaters, vegetarians were more likely to have a higher educational level, whereas vegans had a lower education level

I think it’s good to question these things but the people who go full black/white on everything is where that whole movement died. Saying something strong like “eating any meat” will generally not win over hackers. But “we won’t bring cows to Mars” might work better.

I wonder how many of these "self-reported" vegans were true ethical vegans vs instgram influencer, "I eat chicken once a week" vegans.

Also, what's your point? Is there a proven direct correlation between ethics/morals and educational level? And even if there were, does that imply that this less educated group is as a whole completely wrong? And are you implying that ethics and morals were even objective and measureable? I mean, completely no idea what you are getting at here.

The linked study does show that correlation. But I personally believe it’s more of a second-order effect.

Vegetarianism selects for openness and analytical/reflective thinking but the extra step to veganism selects for absolutism/purity and rigid category-based thinking. Reflective thinking and openness are definitely correlated to IQ so I believe the result in the article.

The point here is to know your audience. The people on this site are perfectly primed to respond well to a vegetarian/environmental point of view.

> Vegetarianism selects for openness and analytical/reflective thinking but the extra step to veganism selects for absolutism/purity

I don't follow how you conclude this at all. there is nothing to indicate this is the case.

Vegetarianism, in Europe at least, requires one to be open to a different diet than what one is used to, usually going against social and cultural norms due to a personal conviction that is reached by analysis and reflection, while veganism brings that to the extreme

Everyone has different ethical frameworks. The label of "extreme" is arbitrary, not objective. I'm sure you would never rape or murder someone. Does that make you an extremist? You don't think it's OK to occasionally rape and murder people right? Vegans' ethical framework is that the murder of animals is unacceptable, and so there is no middle ground. That's not extremism, it's a different framework. To frame it as a spectrum is a misunderstanding.

Pretty sure vegetarians and vegans both are against the killing of animals, so don't know what you are trying to argue. And yes it is very much a spectrum that (very roughly, and not exclusively) goes from: cannibalism -> eating animals -> eating animal derived products -> eating only vegetables and fruit -> eating only vegetable and fruit that fell to the ground without being picked.

And I find it ironic in that you are kind of proving the point, by painting it as a black and white issue. This is what the "extremism" means to me. Another form of that spectrum could be: Endangered species -> wild animals -> farmed animals. Do you think it would be as wrong to kill the last specimens of an animal that is about to go extinct as it would be to kill an animal that has been bred over thousands of years and could probably not survive in the wild on its own? While i am against all killing, when presented with this choice the answer is pretty clear to me.

And you even made a similar distinction yourself in another comment here:

>I hope people say the same about all animals, but especially mammals.

So again, not sure what you are trying to argue.

Ah you said it much better than I did, I'll link your comment.

You have a conclusion that you want to defend and some biases you're unaware of, so you're also not aware how tortured this argument sounds.

Pick some other topic. For example: are people who thinkthat slavery is inherently and always wrong just stupid extremists, compared to people who accept that 'some' slavery is fine?

I feel like you're the type to walk around with calipers.

Edit: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49436484 for a better written argument.

> Compared with meat-eaters, vegetarians were more likely to have a higher educational level, whereas vegans had a lower education level

this is such a... wrong conclusion to make from the study. the study has found a correlation and by no means is it a causation. there are so many cultural, societal reasons for this to be the case. (eg. in india, upper caste people are usually vegetarians who generally have more access to education.)

Dude, most of India are vegetarians. If you have seen the sanitary conditions for storing meat (or at least in 2008/2010 when I backpacked around the country), you would also become one. I certainly did.

Curries with meat were more expensive than vegetable ones in every dhaba. The bonus of not having to pick tiny pieces of meat from heap of chicken bones was a nice bonus (since touching food with hands was generally a very bad idea, sanitizer or not).

Thats more about the variety of vegetables, pulses, spices etc all naturally growing there compared to other regions.

Except that the study is from France?

it was an example of a correlation != causation

the parent comment was basically creating a causational logic for why vegetarians are more likely to be "smart"-er. which is not true.

> > Compared with meat-eaters, vegetarians were more likely to have a higher educational level, whereas vegans had a lower education level

> this is such a... wrong conclusion to make from the study. the study has found a correlation and by no means is it a causation.

I'm not seeing any assertion of causation from that quote.

>eating any meat is morally questionable. (I say this as a person who does eat a lot of meat).

I think this is very wrong. Doesn't account for when you don't have a choice, to be healthy. You need to eat more, you need to consider all possible situations, construction work people need to sustain all that physical labor somehow. It's a more serious chore to even attempt to build a non meat based diet, let alone sourcing everything.

If we could have a healthy alternative that accounts for everything (taste included) then maybe you can make that argument. Until then it's quite shortsighted and ignorant.

Verfiably false statement that you need meat to do physical labor.

Lazy statement that “sourcing” a vegetarian meal is difficult.

Eating less meat is better for your health and better for the planet.

The few exceptions I think worth noting are if you were born into and continue to live in largely/culturally hunter culture (Inuit, bushmen) or where you live is not sustainable for agriculture (Tibet.)

Most folks could just cook more rice, beans, greens and be fine.

>Verfiably false statement that you need meat to do physical labor.

I don't think a lot of people like you understand the real state of things, how a lot of stuff gets done, costs and what's needed for it. One is the quick maffs you do in your head and it's a different thing how real people in real situations behave at scale. You cannot shame billions of people into not eating meat, they'll just come for you and anyone deciding it for them. You need to have a realistic alternative for it, this shaming nonsense is puerile and gets us nowhere, just allows you to finger wag from your high horse is all. I find this perspective and way to go about it extremely shallow and childish.

That’s a lot of words to say you’re triggered.

Interesting that you think having any drawbacks whatsoever to not eating meat is sufficient to justify eating it, I would've thought the drawbacks had to at least outweigh the suffering involved.

As compared to what, those animals never having experienced life ... at all? All farmed animals get to live and experience this place because of us. What you are fundamentally proposing is wiping them from existence, from possible existence. You cannot really argue for that without it being more goulish that you're trying to make it seem when they get turned into food. All of them die eventually, even if we don't eat them. And none would even exist if we didn't need to eat them.

So provided we offer decent conditions for their lived experience it can be a fair trade, since they wouldn't even exist in the first place. Who are you to judge if the cow thinks it's worth it or not? I mean the cow could very well go "moo yeah" if you present the deal "couple of years of grazing running around then get turned into a hamburger? Or no existence at all, what say you?"

If it was only a matter of painless killing I agree that it would've been a lot more gray, but that's not the type of world we currently live in.

It is not only totally possible to be vegan, but it can be more healthy too. The Acadamy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the largest org for nutritionist and dieticians in the world, have a position paper out saying that a well planned diet is appropriate for all stages of life, including pregnancy. The NHS says the same thing. We even have vegan top athletes nowadays such as Djokovic and Hammilton. You can be vegan, so any justification you bring for violence against animals is for taste pleasure, habbit, culture and just generally not having evolved nor being up to date with the science.

I didn't suggest sourcing a non-meat diet.

I'm suggesting the opposite.

by design eating meat is morally questionable. (as do so many things with our modern society.) all meat is fair game, because all animal dependent diet is questionable anyway.

Your excuse for participating in one of the most vile enterprises in human history, factory farming, is that it's too much effort to collectively figure out a less barbaric diet?

And literally no vegan has a problem with people who medically need to eat meet doing so. I own several cats, they are carnivores. The problem is scale: The fact that some people medically must eat meat does not give a free pass for apathetic barbarism to the rest of society.

Even collectively cutting out a single meat or dairy-based meal a week would contribute to a massive reduction in demand. You have no excuse. Use this energy to build a fairer world for all animals instead of using it to get defensive whenever someone brings up how massively inhumane modern factory farming is.

Please read this as an information instead of an advice

> cats, they are carnivores

Carnivores eat (mostly) meat in the wild but thrive on a vegetal kibbles diet, granted they includes the right nutrients. I get the "non natural" intuition, however that's also the case for others kibbles - from the cheapest to the best ones.

My veterinary recommendation:

https://www.benevo.com/vegan-cat-food-from-benevo/

https://www.amipetfood.com/en/products/lines/one-planet/ami-...

Your links go to pet food shops online that sell vegan food. How is that "veterinary recommendation"?

Giving vegan food to cats is animal abuse. If you can't stand the idea of feeding other animals to a cat, don't keep a cat as a pet. Dogs can handle plant-based (but not vegan) diets much better. There are many other animals you could keep as a pet, also. E.g. goats are vegetarian and they have strong, interesting and engaging personalities. If you want a vegan pet, get a goat.

Edit: And if you don't have enough space to keep a pet goat then you probably shouldn't be keeping a pet dog or a pet cat either. One reason people abuse the animals they keep as pets is they assume that an animal is just like a little, furry human and can thrive and be well in any condition a human can, e.g. like living in an apartment etc. This is so far from the truth it's crazy. Most people should really not keep pets.

> veterinary recommendation

Wrong wording, I updated it to "My veterinary recommendation".

> animal abuse

What makes you think so? Those kibbles allow happy and healthy cats while avoiding animal abuse to produce the non-vegetal kibbles. It sounds you can't stand the idea a cat thrive equally with mouses, beef/pork/tuna leftovers (+supplements) or soy/algae (+supplements), but you only provide recommendations without information to support your claim.

Benevo FAQ pages has responses to most interrogation one may have, including health and palatability: https://www.benevo.com/faq/

"It sounds you can't stand the idea..."

So, are you a vet or are you a psychologist? I'm confused.

I will look into these and consult my veterinarians, thanks for the links!

I heard this many times before, same thing with the pigs as well, which are another very smart species of animal.

Based on the same logic, is it ethical to eat a human if they are mentally disabled or not passing some IQ test?

I hope people say the same about all animals, but especially mammals.

The flip side is that they have very short lives. But I can see space aliens saying the same thing about humans.

Octopi essentially consent. They are avid cannibals. In the octopi universe eating an octopi is clearly ok.

is there a case for a long lived animal being a cannibal? I would imagine that prion risk will select for aversion.

Salmons decay after spawning, then die. Their offspring eat the nutrients presents in the water, including their parents leftovers.

Fyi octopus is a Greek not Latin word (meaning 8 feet) and its correct plural would be rather octopodes.

Octopi is equally correct because we're speaking English and frequency of use trumps etymological cromulence.

Octopuses works too. I quite like "Octopods" because -podes is unusual in English, though not entirely absent (see Antipodes).

(I'm not sure "an Octopi" is correct in any of these cases!)

Ding ding! We've found our best candidate for ambassador to a newly discovered alien species!

I'd go, fully expecting to be eaten for the good of mankind.

No, don't think too much because you'll be sad. Better to pretend its just dumb tasty meat.

I find it interesting how people justify (or not) whether to eat another animal.

First time talking to humans? We distinguish murder from killing because the latter is sometimes justified (e.g., in war or self-defense).

We justify everything we do.

Farm animals wouldn't even have existed in the first place if it wasn't for farming them. They wouldn't have experienced their life at all. I personally think hunting is horrible, that's going after something that is alive without you having a say in it.

But say for farmed cows, living in a field for a while, that's better than not existing at all. You cannot judge if it's worth it from the cow's perspective, it got to live, enjoy the sun, eating in the field, doing cow stuff, same as us. Even with the hardships in my life I'd rather have existed, for however long I can, than not existing at all.

So you see it's not as simple to look at and judge farming. If it was for you those animals wouldn't even have experienced this reality. It some cases you may be right, depending on their conditions obviously.

This is an interesting thought experiment, though I generally come to opposite conclusions. I personally think that hunting a wild animal situates the hunter in the broader context of the natural world, in which organisms live by their wits and try to outrun others doing the same.

Conversely, farmed animals owe their existence as you say to our cultivating them. But where you see a moral release in that connection, I see a corruption of life into industrial inputs. A hunted animal many times will catch scent or sound and take flight, winning their life for another day. Livestock can't change their destiny by wit or will. Their entire existence is within the technological apparatus of our species.

The corruption becomes evident in evolution cleaved from the organism's interest and placed in service of our appetites. In turkeys with breasts too large to be able to balance standing up, let alone walk. Such animals can only reproduce by artificial insemination and only eat when food is placed directly in front of them.

Power dynamics such as these tempt us to tell just-so stories about lives well lived. Can we say for them that their lives are preferable to not existing at all? We're surely not neutral.

> hunting a wild animal situates the hunter in the broader context of the natural world, in which organisms live by their wits and try to outrun others doing the same.

It's not exactly a fair fight though. In modern hunting the hunter might not always win, but he never loses.

> Can we say for them that their lives are preferable to not existing at all?

I doubt it. But we don't have to breed animals for maximum meat production at lowest cost in the shortest time. For instance the largest chicken producer in Norway [1] has declared that in future it will only produce slow growing chicken.

[1] https://www.nortura.no/b%C3%A6rekraft-i-nortura/omsorg-for-m...

I am fine with more expensive but higher quality life experience for farmed animals.

Hunting a wild animal is not necessary in most cases. Especially if we have farming. You had no say in the existence of that wild animal, you have no claim on it unless you need it to survive. Say you get lost in the woods and need sustenance to survive, that is excusable sure.

Farmed animals exist purely because of their use to us. We enable their lived experience. Without us they wouldn't exist, they wouldn't experience sitting in the grass looking at a sunset, running around in the field or whatever.

And I did mention it depends on their lived experience. I was not talking about the bleak industrial warehouses animals that never see the light of day and sit in bleak conditions. They don't get much out of it. I am sure we can figure out a fair exchange without getting locked in philosophical conundrums about it.

Peter Singer, father of the animal liberation movement, also now says that farming animals for food but giving them a good life "may be permissible":

More radically, Singer suggested that meat-eating may be permissible if “farms really give the animals good lives, and then humanely kill them, preferably without transporting them to slaughterhouses or disturbing them. In Animal Liberation, I don’t really say that it’s the killing that makes [meat-eating] wrong, it’s the suffering.”

https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2021/05/peter-singer-why-...

Full disclosure: I have profound disagreements with Singer's utilitarian philosophy.

What's not existing like?

I know what existing is like, and I like it. Cows seem to like it when they sit in the grass looking at a sunset. Beats nothing.

Do cows experience non-existence the way that non-existent humans do, or more like non-existent rocks, or something in between?

You cannot experience non-existence. I don't even think you understand what you mean by non-existence the way you used it in that phrase. At most you can use it as contrast to existence, which can be enjoyable or not. If your existence is the least bit enjoyable it beats not existing. at least for me, and plenty others if you ask them.

We also know not existing is desired by others with worse lived experience. Which they think that whatever it even is, not existing, must be better than their lived experience. It's basically a way to stop existing, moving into non-existence. So we can only discuss about existing.

If you have any ideas about non-existence that's cute and interesting and you should maybe write a book about it or something.

>experience of non-existing rocks.

This is not really a philosophical argument as it is misuse of logic and words. I'll let you figure out why.

> You cannot judge if it's worth it from the cow's perspective, it got to live, enjoy the sun, eating in the field, doing cow stuff, same as us.

Yep, same as us.

Except it's a cow, so not the same as us. I mean, presumably.

Yes, we operate at a different level, and don't serve the same purpose (humans are not food). Similarities are that we are engineered (psychologically, 13+ years of schooling), operate in an artificial environment not a natural one. All sorts of manipulative tricks are used in order to convince us to gift the fruits of our labour. Typically most people hand over > 45% of their effort (taxes) for over 30 years. If the best value humans offered could be provided in just two years of physical growth (like meat cows), we would be facing different terrain and expectations.

If the cow doesn't have the same living experience as we do, to some extent, then you have no argument for not farming them, since it doesn't matter, because "there's nobody in there" as it were.

You need to make up your mind.

I'm sorry, make up my mind about what? I think you have me confused with someone else?

I find it interesting how people vaguepost without managing to make any semblance of contribution to the discussion

you mean you don't think it's right to make a creature take an IQ test before deciding to eat them or not? "Yes, right, well, you seem sufficiently stupid enough to ingest."

There are hazards to doing it on an individual level, but on a species level sure why not? Between a talking plant and a brainless bovine I know which one I'd say is the obvious right answer to eat (assume both species occurred naturally for this thought experiment).

I like to see where they are farmed before I decide... and having seen much of that in the US I've landed on "maybe some bugs are ok to eat."

Personally that justification is based heavily on the taste.

Based on not having a realistic choice. The only person I personally know to successfully pull it off is an acquaintance that's rich by local standards, doesn't work, spends a lot of time sourcing and cooking it, and also eating it. He needs to eat more for same energy. It's so involved that most of his life revolves around it. It takes a good bit out of his time. The rest of the people from that friend group couldn't afford it, couldn't afford spending the money, couldn't afford spending the extra time on it.

I personally wouldn't eat meat if I had a good alternative. I rarely do, I eat it for health related reasons, considering my setup.

...just buy some beans/lentils and learn to cook those? It's not a herculean effort or particularly expensive.

Yes, and if you have such a care-free attitude towards a vegan diet you should expect to become deficient in all sorts of necessary nutrients.

Everyone who treats plant-based diets with any degree of responsibility will stress the need to plan them carefully, considering the needs of the individual and their stage of life, and to accompany them with supplements to make up for the nutrients that not even well-planned diets cannot provide.

For example, "Top Tips" from the British Dietary Association:

* Carefully planned plant-based diets can support healthy living at every age and life stage

* Plant-based diets can help to manage weight and may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases

* You can get all essential nutrients from plant foods but vegans need to ensure a reliable source of vitamin B12

* If excluding dairy, make sure you consume other calcium-rich foods

* Include a wide variety of plant-derived foods to ensure your diet is balanced and sustainable

https://www.bda.uk.com/resource/vegetarian-vegan-plant-based...

Far, far from "just buy some beans/lentils". TBH that's just irresponsible and dangerous advice.

Can you explain?

My wife stopped eating octopus after seeing the giant Pacific octopus in the Monterey aquarium. The way it stares at you hints at a real intelligence. Maybe the smaller species aren't that smart, but why take the chance?

I'm pretty convinced we could discuss philosophy with octopus friends if they didn't all die immediately after reproducing.

Don't kid yourself Jimmy, if an octopus ever got the chance he'd eat you and everyone you cared about!

So would a primitive human.

That's why cannibalism was so popular back in the day.

So would a cow

They're too delicious to consider how smart they are.

I cannot judge too harshly, since I still eat many kinds of animal. However, I never ate octopus growing up, and I learned of their intelligence before I tried it more than a few times. It was easier to "never start" than to quit. And besides, octopus is not that great and if you insist on eating seafood I find pretty much any other item to have more enjoyable texture.

Octopus is the only animal I've ever stopped eating due to ethical concerns (not that I'm against examining my relationship with other animals). That being said, it's really delicious if you get it fresh. It just so happens that it's very rare (in the US) to get fresh octopus. I liked tako nigiri and grilled octopus, Mediterranean style. The taste and texture difference between fresh and not fresh is huge though. Probably another great reason not to eat them!

This is almost certainly equally or more valid for pigs. Pigs have the unfortunate property of being much tastier than octopus, though.

I wanna say that despite being extremely intelligent for a mollusk, they are not intelligent at all compared with other animals like dophins, whales, etc, that not only can communicate with each other, but also develop a culture in their groups.

Octopus are smart for what they are, but not smart enough to think of them as being superior to pigs or cows intelligence-wise.

Some people enjoy eating live baby octopuses. To me that is an odd delicacy -but then some Americans like shucking Oysters too, so I can't be critical.

On the context of ethics, oysters are probably the safest thing from the animal kingdom to eat. They’re really the closest thing we have to a meat based plant. Many who consider themselves vegan have no issues wasting them.

I don't eat octopus or veal. Delicious or not, there are some lines that perhaps should not be crossed.

they are indeed, which is why it was so difficult to stop eating them... just like popplers!

It's like 9 brains, one central one in the head and 8 semi-autonomous ones in the arms. Makes one wonder what an octopus consciousness is like. Is it distributed among the nine brains, or focused on the central one? If the latter then the arm-brains would be zombie minds. It's also possible the 8 arms have their own separate experiences.

We also have a nervous system distributed throughout our bodies, so we do experience the full body, but the neural signals are sent to one location, not nine. We experience ourselves as a unified hole, allowing exceptions for certain conditions.

> We also have a nervous system distributed throughout our bodies, so we do experience the full body, but the neural signals are sent to one location, not nine.

Mostly yes. But we do have some processing that bypasses the brain: reflexes for example. The classic example is the kick reflex that doctors test with a small mallet on your knee. Or when you blink as something flies towards your eyes. It happens and your brain gets informed afterwards.

But there are degrees of non-conscious processing, from the heart beating by itself and your guts doing their things, to the breath which will be on autopilot until you take control over it, to entirely voluntary things like moving about your limbs (for healthy individuals).

Maybe the octopuses experience their disconnected brains somewhere on that spectra, where the limbs are semi-autonomous unless it focuses on them? (All we can do is speculate, there is no known way to learn the qualia of being an octupus.)

>to the breath which will be on autopilot until you take control over it

Thank you for making me breath manually.

I don't know if you could consider what the AV node in the heart does as "processing". It's more like a clock, to my understanding.

I'm not a biologist or in a medical field at all, but surely the fact that the heart rate goes up if you exercise means there is some form of feedback loop (which to me sounds like a rudimentary form of processing).

Weirdly, this is controlled by the brain as part of the sympathetic nervous system: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/23262-sympathetic...

If you haven't read it, you might enjoy Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series. It's fiction which explores different intelligences, with the second novel[0] dealing specifically with octopuses.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Ruin

While the specifics of octopus experience are hard for us to fathom, we do say our stomachs have a mind of their own, and science has backed that up mostly. The enteric nervous system is complex and large and intimately in touch with gut microbes (of which there are trillions), and is connected to the brain. Both speak to each other, but the gut does a lot of independent stuff, and we’re learning a lot of the chemicals the gut microbiome releases shapes our moods and behavior.

For an octopus, it must be something similar but with all 8 of their appendages. Some specialize for hunting vs moving, so that’s at least easy to understand, but given they can act independently, I wonder if the octopus feels like the conflict between gut and brain with respect to food.

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness [excellent]

https://www.amazon.com/Other-Minds-Octopus-Origins-Conscious...

Certain conjoined twins also have multiple brains in a single body, like the Hensel sisters[1]. In their case, they each control one arm and one leg, but are otherwise quite independent. I seem to recall they said they can both feel the whole body, at least to some degree.

So perhaps a bit similar, perhaps entirely different.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abby_and_Brittany_Hensel

How sure are you that you have a unified embodied experience? Have you ever caught an unexpected ball? Run (I mean, really run)? There are a lot of situations where you conscious self isn't in charge so much as it is a really good storyteller convincing 'you' that you've done something yourself that you had no part in. Cut the interface between brain hemispheres and 'you' will still have the absolute self assurance that 'you' are the one in charge.

Mind != Consciousness

  > I didn't realize that an octopuses brain was spread out all over its body.

Our skin cells communicate in a neuron-like fashion, albeit much more slowly: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-found-the-silent-scr...

Should have read the Children of Time series (Adrian Tchaikovsky) ;)

Yep, they do some cognition in their arms. You also do some processing in your ears and your eyes. There is a lot of evidence that you learn to recognize certain stimulus in the neurons outside of the "brain".

Smells are a strong indicator of this, with smells able to invoke memories in a way that nothing else can.

In some sense this (not as literally as this case, but in measurable scientific tests) is true for other species. Processing is demonstrated to be distributed through sense organs in the frog in What the Frogs Eye Tells the Frogs Brain https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4065609, i.e. in frogs at least, the eye is not like a camera sending pixels to its brain

> I didn't realize that an octopuses brain was spread out all over its body.

Yep, distributed around, though with concentrations in some areas.

They have a concentration of neurons in a sort of doughnut shape gathered around the mouth and oesophagus area, their gullet actually goes through the middle of their most dense brain area.

Very large potential for ice-cream headaches right there.

If they eat something too big they literally break their brain and become stupid.

It is a pity they have such a short lifespan

If they lived longer they might develop complex social structures, and then we might be in trouble.

What does it mean to “produce proteins with about twice their usual accuracy”? Smaller feature size, essentially?

No biological process is 100% precise. DNA copying being imperfect is the driver of evolution, which is the prime example of this. What I assume they're referring to is that their ribosomes just "make fewer mistakes" when creating proteins from mRNA.

These "mistranslated proteins" are normally infrequent and benign, and their material is recycled eventually. But that whole process wastes energy, so making a "better ribosome" makes all cellular processes more energy efficient and allows the energy budget to be reallocated.

Reminds me of the children of time books - think it’s the second book with the octopus

Children of Ruin is about advanced Octopi, not as good as Children of Time, but interesting. That series or Fire Upon the Deep are really good for conceptualizing truly alien intelligence.

the mountain in the sea is also a good read. focuses specifically on ingredient octopus, I didn't enjoy it as much as children of time but still an interesting read.

I would imagine their intelligence is directly proportional to the so many degrees of freedom the arms have for grasping, but don't ask which one came first, chicken or egg?

the history of how people have conceived of causality between human intelligence and human hands (and in which direction dependency may lie) is quite interesting. "It is by having hands that man is the most intelligent of animals." —Anaxagoras, circa 450 BCE.

Very insightful given that hands do have massive over representation in our brains:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_homunculus

Why should intelligence _other_ than motor-planning be tied to the degrees of freedom of their movement?

- snakes have a high number of degrees of freedom but aren't especially bright

- squid have 2 more limbs than octopuses and aren't as smart

I think the shallow-water vs deep-water thing mentioned in the article is important; reef and similar environments give a lot more opportunities for smart camouflage, complex navigation, tool-use opportunities etc than the open ocean.

most likely the enormous control surfaces their biology acquired required distributed neuronal mass and once that mass existed further intelligence became advantageous because it was a minor change at that point (switches during embryology increasing neuron counts and other aspects).

why chicken or egg? it's way to imagine both evolving together in a mutually reinforcing relationship where the gains in one are direct incentives for the other to continue to evolve, etc

Pure, shameless clickbait as usual from Smithsonian magazine.

> Although there is no direct evidence that the adaptation is linked to expanded octopus brainpower,

I.e. the entire connection between this mutation and octopus intelligence is made up. Not even a shred of justification.

I mean it's a gene that helps them build a protein. It would be nearly impossible to say there's a "direct" link to that and intelligence. I think they are validly qualifying the article

A lot of science journalism has, for better or worse, a mandate to increase public interest and excitement about science. If you want a dry and totally accurate account of the science you should read the paper directly. If you want your curiosity and imagination excited, articles and programs like these are great.

Here's their proposed link later in the article:

> The findings hint that the rRNA adaptation might be connected to the evolution of the shallow-water octopuses’ large nervous systems. Their brains—which are spread throughout their bodies—had to expand quickly as they learned to keep up with predators and increased competition in this environment. Nerve cells, or neurons, are long-lived, study co-author Rishav Mitra tells Scientific American’s Cody Cottier, which means protein misfolding is particularly bad for them. By preventing that, the rRNA break “might help these neurons to work well,” he adds.

A conjecture like this probably has no place in a scientific article but absolutely has a place in pop sci magazines like Smithsonian

That's a shame, because the study in itself is interesting and raises some questions, but the whole time I was wondering why protein translation accuracy would be related to intelligence? Turns out there is no evidence of link and that the title just speculates.

lets splice in a gene fix for cephalopod senescence and get the invasion over with

I have this headcanon that an ancient ape civilization was at war with cephalopods and they created a weapon of mass destruction that artificially gimped octopus lifespans :'(

There is only one species of octopus that lives socially (LPSO are rare and incredibly intelligent but their lifespans are like 3 years)

Maybe your headcannon should be that apes did a "tower of babel" type thing to make all the octopus individualistic and unable to organize into a civilization

It's more complex than that. The famed octopus city[1] was populated by the gloomy octopus, a species which prior to the discover was believed to have been exclusively solitary.

[1] - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/octopus-city-obser...

Well the LPSO is the only consistently social octopus. "Octopus city" was actually 2 cities (the second one being discovered in 2016) and they were groups of about 15 gloomy octopuses. There are a couple of other examples of octopus sociality but on a species-wide level only the LPSO can be comfortably described as social

Almost all octopuses are cannibalistic but Abdopus have also been found living close to and tolerating each other

Actually, just like how among apes only one [sub]species has been known to develop sapience and civilization, could there be one particular species among octopuses that is particularly well suited for [future] sapience?

Should we wipe them out now, just to be safe?

(no, don't. all cephalopods should be protected)

mutations that occur after reproduction are never weeded out since the genes are passed on already, so natural selection on its own can result in this, just like cancer or lower safeguards against cancer such as short telomeres in humans

This isn’t quite true, is it? A mutation that killed 5 years after childbirth would result in higher mortality rates for the child.

Octopus have extremely high mortality rates and extremely large litters, so there’s that

They don’t raise their offspring

Though FWIW, they do protect their eggs quite well.

Isn't this tied to the senesce? Where their digestive tract has closed and they starve to death at the nest

Indeed, AFAIK. I've never seen an explanation for this. Most things that reproduce successfully want to do it again - or at least their DNA does. Perhaps octopuses are simply disappointed by the experience.

Octopus senescence isn’t a choice. It’s a fully programmed part of their life cycle. There’s a bunch of hormones released by the optic gland that put them in this stage where they stop eating, stop healing, and sometimes even mutilate themselves.

For the mothers, the entire time is spent cleaning and blowing water over the eggs.

It’s generally accepted this behavior is the necessary pair to their high aggression and cannibalism. It’s likely if they didn’t go through this they’d end up eating their babies. By dying, they make way for a new generation. And this is their reproductive strategy. Live a short very active life. If you survive, mate, then die and leave the hunting grounds to the next generation.

That explains how the mutation was promoted

But not whether other adaptations could be possible. Fix the digestive tract issue and keep the female well fed and defending the nest in a different way

There's no single mutation. Nor is their sensecense merely a digestive tract issue. This is a core feature of their lifecycle. If you mutate the genes that make the hormones that trigger it, or the receptors for those hormones, you won't just prevent their sensecense, because those genes have other functions important to other parts of their life cycle.

Ah yeah, I was thinking humans

Can we CRISPR it into humans? I volunteer. I’ve always wanted to improve my protein folding accuracy.

Plus your pants would fit like a glove.

Correlation does not imply causation and it's not even clear this qualifies as correlation.

not sure I agree, they reconstituted this mutation in E coli ribosomes, using Fluc as a luminescence readout, and saw a reduction in aggregates at similar luminescence without a reduction in translation speeds.

Not really familiar with translation machinery or luciferase, but it seems pretty compelling to me.

I'm talking about the intelligence claim. There is nothing surprising about a gene having a molecular effect.

ah yeah, the intelligence claim was basically an afterthought in the actual paper, the smithsonian mag did a bad job with their reporting. the paper is just called: 'Evolution of a core ribosomal innovation in octopus', and I would argue the E coli thing is far from a non-sequitur in that context

the cross-organism increase in fidelity is pretty damn shocking. Ribosomes are one of the most optimized, slow-evolving things out there, and transplanting genes from animals to coli is already a very checkered endeavor.

what about it is not correlation, that you imply?

The default assumption is non-correlation. No firm evidence was presented demonstrating correlation. Hence "not even clear it qualifies as correlation."

This is a one time event that happened sometime after incirrates and cirrates split. This is like claiming there is a correlation between the Carrington Event of 1859 and the outbreak of the US civil war in 1860. One happened before the other. One could plausibly construct some narrative that causally links the two. But does it qualify as correlation?

i understand correlation and causation (as a math person for decades) and the article talks of trying to establish correlation with experiments on e coli and introducing similar breaks.

Inserting the same break in the ribosomes of Escherichia coli bacteria made the engineered cells produce proteins with about twice their usual accuracy.

they then went looking at the divergence data between the various distantly related cephalopods and again said they again couldn't find a counterexample to the conjecture that the RNA break and higher intelligence are correlated, but not established causal, because both phenotype and genetics are individually correlated to the same timeframes. that doesn't mean they're correlated to each other, let alone causal, of course, in either direction.

I'm referring to the link with intelligence. The e coli experiments has nothing to do with that.

> that doesn't mean they're correlated to each other, let alone causal, of course, in either direction.

Which was my point.

maybe he/she missed the part where they reconstituted the break in e coli to show that it had the molecular effect they said it did?

I was referring to the correlation (or lack thereof) with intelligence. The e coli work is a non-sequitor.

yeah that's what i thought too.

>If we “use nature as a guide to understand how that happens naturally,” she says, “then we can probably find ways to put it into human cells.”

Oh boy! Please hurry up with this. I want brains in all my appendages so I can adapt in real time to all the environmental conditions that I am encountering moment to moment.

Test it first though, maybe on a rat or a planarian. Your choice.

EDIT: I know this is great research. Understanding how evolution has allowed other species to adapt to their environments and overcome conditions that would be dangerous helps us assemble the pieces of the puzzle of the origin of life. I just don't think that the first thing we should be considering when we find something that makes an organism unique is the question of how we can insert genetic change into the human genome. If humans had ever needed it the mutation would already be present through natural selection.

If the end game is always to modify the human genome then there is no reason to do the research on other organisms.

Set up the conditions with humans and run a few generations through. The ones who make it likely have some genetic difference that predisposes them to winning that part of life. No need to rush things. Do it once, do it right.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com